This silly action-adventure is a deliberate mish-mash of elements suggested by Rodriguez's fans. While the resulting plot line is watchable, it feels like a short version of Spy Kids or Sky High.

"Two Scoops' is a cinematic adventure, created by Robert Rodriguez with the help of his fans. In the film, you will find a scene featuring 'the agent,' a secret weapon, and the monster. Each of these elements was either created or inspired by a fan of Robert Rodriguez. Throughout the film, you will also find missing person posters. Each of these 'missing people' are fans of Robert Rodriguez, who submitted their photos in order to appear in the film."

Classic Statuary Candle by Swiss sculptor Urs Fischer
On exhibit at the MOCA April 21 - August 19, 2013

This massive wax sculpture ("Untitled") was is a wax representation of Giambologna's classic statue Rape of the Sabine Women
(1579). The twist is that the work contains a wick that slowly melts the statue to introduce an air of the ephemeral to the monolithic piece. As a result of the melting, it becomes quite eerie about half way through the process.

This installation, constructed from reflective mylar and some fifteen thousand light bulbs is equipped with motion
sensors that cause the bulbs to shine down on bar patrons as they move through the room. It's as if each customer has their own little rain cloud of light moving with them, lighting their way. Very cool, but I bet that the bartender will be nursing fantasies about riddling the whole thing with bullets by the week's end.

"Ban is a pavilion which has been constructed for the Beijing Design
Week 2012. The Chinese title refers to flower petals, and similar to the
way that the shape of a flower is created by its bent petals, Ban is
constructed from bent polymer sheets which form a self-supporting
structure and create shapes and volume from a multitude of leaves.

Based on Orproject’s research into anisotropic sheet morphologies,
the geometries have here been used in a structural orthogonal
orientation and form a system of columns, arches and vaults, all based
on single-curved elements. The resulting field of lines takes the
viewers eye across the structure and into the sky, and like a giant
flower Ban is hovering in the air above Beijing’s ancient Hutong roofs."

Masterplan is a installation by designer and artist Chad Wright inspired
by his own experiences growing up in a sprawling suburb of Southern
California. The piece is meant to juxtapose the playful childhood
experience of building sand castles on the beach with his brother against the grim, modern-day reality of our current real estate collapse.

I don't know what it is that makes me descibe these as "hipster." Maybe it's the fact that they all look like they've been through an Instagram filter. In any case, they're still beautiful. Check out the DKNG store. They've got plenty of tempting impulse purchases.

Olympus Overdrive is a webcomic in which the gods of Greek mythology compete
to replace Zeus as the ruler of Olympus. Each deity is rebooted into
the modern world and bound to a mortal companion, and together they must
try to defeat the other teams. The winner immortal gets Zeus's
Thunderbolt, while the winner mortal gets anything they desire.

Rifftrax hilariously carries on the tradition of MST3k. And though the premise is much the same as before, the Rifftrax folks have added something new: MP3 Commentaries. Instead of confining themselves to public domain and titles whose rights are easy to procure, they do commentaries on Hollywood blockbusters in audio form only. The MST3K spin-off movie riffing series just completed a "best of five years" compilation video.

"All Streets consists of 240 million individual road
segments. No other features — no outlines, cities, or types of terrain —
are marked, yet canyons and mountains emerge as the roads course around
them, and sparser webs of road mark less populated areas. More details
can be found here, with additional discussion of the previous version here."

Hanoi-based paper artist Nguyễn Cường
lives creates his original origami pieces from a handmade Vietnamese paper known as Dó.
In an interview with All Things Paper, he says that he first got into paper art at the early age of five but that he hasn't embraced origami as his full-time career, despite the fact that his
work has been featured in numerous books and magazine feature on the art.

A Brain Is For Eating
is a playfully twisted zombie children’s book written by husband and
wife team Dan and Amelia Jacobs “that teaches the little walking undead
how to find and enjoy their next meal.” It offers 40 pages of
brain-consuming fun and beautiful illustrations by artist Scott Brundage.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

In Icarus 1, a boy strives to escape a life amid a crumbling family by building his own space ship. This piece is a shoestring budget version of Radio Flyer, which happens to have been one of my favorite childhood movies. There's not a lot of story to this one, but it's very well shot.

WIRED has just launched a hilarious new animated series called Codefellas. Codefellas is a series of phone conversations between a young new NSA analyst and her agency mentor, the eccentric Agent Topple, who is voiced by John Hodgman. It's a bit like a supercut of all the CIA jokes from American Dad. I'm looking forward to it.

About Face is an impressionist sculpture composed of one hundred individually balanced and weighted copper panels that move in the wind, some swinging freely while other are articulated by spinning stainless steel cups. It's among the most striking of Howe's work, by not the most intricate. Howe specializes in complex kinetic metal sculptures that are as intriguing as they are shiny, and recently, his work has been popping up around the web. Check out some of it below.

“I attempt, with an economy of means, to construct objects whose
visual references range from lo-tech sci-fi paraphernalia to
microbiological or astronomical models. Utilizing primarily stainless
steel armatures that are driven either by hammered curvilinear shapes or
flat fiberglass covered discs, I hope the pieces assume a spare, linear
elegance when conditions are still, mutating to raucous animation when
the wind picks up.”

The intricate cut-outs of Anastassia Elias are created
from the most mundane of products - toilet paper rolls - and while we’re not a fan of them
stacking up on the bathroom shelf, for her, I might make an exception.

Kevin LCK may be an illustrator, but occasionally, he works in three dimensions. Like his illustrative work, the sculptures are in spare black and white and made using paper. His new series consists of a number of electronic appliances, such as a computer, microwave oven, and a television set. Inside each appliance is a carefully crafted home setting. Explaining the thought behind the series Kevin says

"‘Ordinary Behavior’ is a project about the unhealthy relationship
between human and technology in an everyday context. [...] I seeked [sic] to
detach the audience from the real world temporarily, provide them with a
space to rethink and reconsider the way we behave and think about the
relationship between ourselves, objects and environment with technology
in a more conscious way."

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

"Captured by an unseen helicopter, the narrative unfolds through winding roads, erupting forests, and emerging mountains. Paper City grows in one fluid take, with skyscrapers rising from the page—only to crumble, wrinkle, and gently crease back into the ground."

In this adaptation of the 2007 science fiction Matthew De Abaitua novel The Red Men, a robot is sent into a tense situation when police surround a man holed up with a shotgun. Dr. Easy is intended to be a prologue for a full-length adaptation of The Red Men, which I would personally welcome given the quality of the piece.

Les Machines de l’île on
the former shipyards in Nantes, France is an unprecedented artistic project.
Born from the imaginations of François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice,
it is a blend of the steampunk-esque worlds of Jules Verne, the mechanics of Leonardo da Vinci, and the industrial history of real-word Nantes. Read an interview with François Delarozière at The Telegraph.

"Made by Cindy Coelho of The Wedding Cake Shoppe in Toronto for my
September wedding. Almost an exact replica of the sketch I made,
inspired by the Mario Kart series of games by Nintendo. This cake
features four stages from the original game including Mario Circuit,
Ghost Valley, Bowser's Castle, and Rainbow Road, with a podium on top
with many of the characters of the Mario universe. The characters are
plastic toys (the ones in karts actually wind up). All layers are mint
chocolate with chocolate chunks and fondant icing. Next to the cake,
you'll see a series of mushroom-style cupcakes."

"I am relatively new to Dr. Who, really didn’t watch it while growing up
since it was on TV at odd times and I was still trying to figure out
Monty Python. There are many versions of the TARDIS so some details may
be mashed-up as I tried to adapt it for construction. I’m not really
sure exactly which one this ended up looking the most like but feel free
to comment on any authentic details you would like to expound on."

Germinate! Germinate! British photographer Chris Balcombe is a prolific collector of original Doctor Who
props, some of which date back to the 1960s. Included in enviable his
collection are a number of different Daleks. However the incredibly
awesome “Dalek Planter” pictured above was built by Chris himself, who
modeled it after the golden Daleks which battled both Christopher
Eccleston’s ninth Doctor and David Tennat’s tenth Doctor. Via: Geek Native

This contemplative short film lands here by virtue of it's robots, but at it's heart is the emotional story of a brother caring for his younger sister in a near-future setting. It stands out for its excellent acting, but it's the Jetson-like robots that you'll remember.

Melanie Norris shares her passion for finding beauty in people that others may have overlooked. ""My responsibility as an artist is to convey beauty in people. To find
the wonderful side of things that may typically be ignored, or just kind
of passed on the street ..." Part nine of the "Making Art" series.

Jim F. Faure, better known as Jim Skull, creates macabre yet fascinating skull sculptures from a wide range of materials, including papier-maché, rope, string, and tea bags. He cites the cultural heritages of Africa, New Zealand, Asia, and Oceania as being his chief inspirations. Here's a short interview with Jim Skull.

I can’t decide whether I like the James Bond Birthday Cake or the cake stand better. Both are fantastic, though it would have been perfect if only it had been made for someone turn 007. I guess the effort would have been wasted on a toddler. The cake was an 8" cube Chocolate Mud Cake, with 4 layers of
chocolate ganache in-between. The guns are toy which were painted gold.

Satelliteeyes is a Mac app that automatically changes your desktop wallpaper to the satellite view of where you are, right now.

This engraved Wooden Astronaut Brooch would make
the perfect gift for any space adventurers and explorers! It is based
on the famous photograph of the astronaut Bruce McCandless using the
Manned Manoeuvring Unit on a Challenger Mission.

Friday, June 21, 2013

With the help of the internet, Albiac has set out on a project to capture as many faces in star clusters as he possibly can before his big flickr Stardust Portrait exhibition. If you'd like to participate, just crop down a photo and share it through Google Drive.

“Life is finite. Creativity isn’t. An artist has the potential to
create infinite artworks but only some of them will see the light due to
the constraint of time. What if we use technology to outsource the
creation of art so more of these potential artworks are finally created?
Modelling artistic decisions into software would provide a generative
assistant that could even survive an artist in the creation of
meaningful works of visual art. This project is a first experiment
around this concept.”

Based on the short story "Space Operetta" by Australian sci-fi author Adam Browne.

After Frederick III receives commands from the Pope to lay siege to Constantinople,
Frederick seeks a portent in the stars, only to find that the signs aren't favorable.
His court astrologer, Regiomontanus, desperate to offer a solution, suggests traveling
into space to move the stars themselves?

Periodic Tableware is a line of drinkware based upon the iconic look of laboratory glass. If, like me, you’ve always had a fascination with beakers, but you haven’t felt
completely confident in using the container that you just placed
hydrochloric acid in as a drinking glass, then this Kickstarter project is for you. The full set will set you back US$260, but you can get a single glass for just US$25. Feel like a mad scientist every time you pour yourself a drink!

"Probably my most documented painting, thanks to Irene Gallo’s camerawork. This is based on Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and started at the Illustration Master Class. James Gurney stopped by and you can see me painting it, among other cool stuff from that week here."